Technical Field
This application generally relates to managing and organizing digital images.
Background
With the increase in digital photography over the past several years, users have been presented with the tasks of managing and organizing all of the digital images they have taken. This includes not only determining where to store their digital images, but how to store them such that the user can easily sort or search the digital images. Currently, the most prevalent way to sort digital images has been manually, through the use of specialized digital-image-library-management software applications, and auto sorted libraries.
Users traditionally sort their digital images by importing them into a file-management application running on their computers, tablets, etc., and then manually sorting them according to the user's personal preferences. For example, this can entail creating various folders associated with different events (e.g., wedding, summer trip) and moving event-related digital images into their respective folders. This process can also include deleting unwanted images (e.g., blurry images).
In order to make the storing and sorting process easier for users, specialized digital-image-library-management software applications were developed. These applications automate some of the steps or actions associated with the manual process referenced above. More specifically, these applications can automatically generate folders and can group or organize digital images based on factors, such as image capture time, image capture location, etc. However, these applications do not filter out unusable or unwanted images, and do not provide users with flexibility when organizing digital images.
More recently, digital-image-management-software applications have been introduced that generate a “moments” album. This process has typically consisted of storing photos on a remote server (e.g., “the cloud”), and once a pre-determined number of images are stored, a mini album containing images based on a determination carried out by the software application is generated. One drawback to this approach is that digital images are not actually sorted or organized, but rather only specific digital images are highlighted.
While all of the above-described methods provide users with the ability, at some level, to manage and organize all of a user's digital images, these methods are still either very manual intensive or do not provide the user with much flexibility.